Popular reviews

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  Review by Joe ★★★★★ 4

  The old line on classic Hollywood fare like this is that "they don't make 'em like that anymore." But in this movie's case that doesn't really apply, because this has the realism and complexity of a movie made 25 years later. The lion's share of credit for this belongs to the screen couple of John Garfield and Phyllis Thaxter, who are by far the most believable married couple I've ever seen in a movie like this. Their relationship is the emotional center of the movie, so even when Garfield is shooting it out on a boat in the middle of the sea you never forget why he's doing it or what's at stake.

  About that shoot-out: Wow! I've seen a lot of action movies directed by Michael Curtiz but none of them have the visceral power that this last shootout has - between that and the racetrack heist it became hard to believe I was watching a Curtiz movie. Incredible.

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  Review by Peter Labuza ★★★★ 5

  A possible entry for Curitz's best film for those looking outside of Casablanca; his own adaptation of Hemingway's To Have and Have Not, an intense noir taking place along sunlit suburban paradise, which makes the brutal material all the more shocking. One of the more existential noirs as John Garfield doesn't really do much in terms of motivated plot action besides the beginning and the ending, more toying with looking at the alternate lives he could have had between the two women (Patiricia Neal gets the soak up the sex, but Phyllis Thaxter is absolutely devastating as Garfield's wife, just trying to reclaim the pre-war man she loved; that moment she stares at her bleached hair in the mirror an…

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  Review by Jesse Snoddon ★★★★★ 2

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  "I thought by this time I'd have the world on fire."

  Family man Harry Morgan (John Garfield) is having trouble making ends meet and struggling to provide for his family with his not so lucrative dream job as the captain of a boat he charters for fishing tours or quick vacation trips. He's always one called in debt away from losing everything and under constant stress. So when a wealthy passenger hits the gambling too hard and skips out on a hefty bill, leaving Harry $100 short of being able to clear customs and stranded in Mexico, he decides to take a chance and make the money in a fast and illicit way. It doesn't go well and things begin…

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  Review by trolleyfreak ★★★★★ 9

  Howard Hawks' To Have And Have Not is many, many things - since you ask, it's a stone cold masterpiece! - but what it most definitely isn't is a faithful adaptation of Ernest Hemmingway's novel, so just six years after the Bogie/Bacall version Warner Brothers filmed it again, this time sticking much more closely to Hemmingway's story - the only major difference being to change the setting from Florida to California - and entrusting its direction to one of their most capable craftsmen: Michael Curtiz.

  John Garfield is outstanding in the Bogart part: there's nothing 'rum' about his performance as Captain Morgan, a fisherman whose decision to hire out his boat to a guy (Ralph Dumke) taking his mistress (Patricia…

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  Review by John Frankensteiner ★★★★½

  What are some of your favorite films?

  PECKINPAH: Rashomon and a film that Michael Curtiz made based on a Hemingway novel: The Breaking Point.
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  It's easy to see why Sam considered this one of his favorites. While The Breaking Point exists very much in its prime noir time, its sensibilities seem forward thinking, it could almost be a bridge between noir and neo-noir with its winks towards the expected text while creating something much bleaker, something truer (which is not to dismiss To Have and Have Not, the first adaptation of the same source material, which is blissful escapism). This is literally revisionism, in its most pure terms, just smack in the middle of the first wave, so no…

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  Review by Sean Gilman ★★★½ 5

  If you thought To Have and Have Not was too flippant, too insolent in its relation to character and story, not focusing seriously enough on the class struggles of characters marginally existing at the ends of the world, well have I got the movie for you. A readaptation of Hemingway's novel (famously his worst, according to Howard Hawks) envisions it not as a comedy of oddballs caught in the riptide of World War II, but rather an Odetsian melodrama about the doomed economic struggles of the post-war Everyman, played to perfection by John Garfield, Clash by Night with slightly fewer speeches. Bosley Crowther, naturally, loved it. "Warner Brothers, which already has taken one feeble swing and a cut at Ernest…

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  Review by Gentry ★★★★★ 2

  “You do everything so hard. No matter what it is, you do it hard.”

  Hemingway, Garfield and Curtiz is like a match made in macho heaven. This is kino 50s dude cinema. This is a gripping dad movie that you watch standing up, inches from the screen. Boats! Gangsters! Babes! Cock fighting! Heady Mexican beers! 

  A testament to Garfield’s greatness that he can so believably play a too honest “nice daddy” do-gooder, a crooked slimeball lawyer and a lonely violinist. But no matter the character, he plays back-against-the-wall so well. 

  A seriously sweaty palm shootout finale on a boat. And a chilling final shot of a fatherless son. Fighting in the Philippines is easy, the real war is putting clothes on backs and food on the table. It’s so hard to love a man.

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  Review by Karl ★★★★ 8

  A devastating film-noir based on a story by Earnest Hemingway shows the lengths one will go to not just keep up with the Joneses but to simply survive. John Garfield, in perhaps his more powerful role, plays a family man who makes ends meet with his fishing boat. Woking in the waters off the shores of Mexico and California, guarantees that a criminal element will present itself.

  Director Michael Curitz creates palpable dread and anxiety in both confined and open spaces. The contrast of being on wide-open waters while stuck in a tight space on a boat, along with some dangerous fellas on board, had me gripping the couch. The entirety of The Breaking Point has scenes of nail-biting tension…

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  Review by laird ★★★★★

  Whatever reason this movie has been buried in classic Hollywood canon, be it John Garfield's ruination at the hands of HUAC, rights SNAFUs with the Hemingway estate, or the existence of another great adaptation of the same novel, it's time to dig it out. Heartbreaking and humane.

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  Review by RAFIF ★★★★½

  John Garfield is one of those rare actors who could be the man next door. Only his final fight with the gangsters is a little over the top. Otherwise,his character is thoroughly incredible.

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  Review by WraithApe ★★★★ 3

  A gem of a Film Noir, directed by Michael Curtiz. Based on Ernest Hemmingway's To Have and Have Not, it's always been overshadowed by Howard Hawks's adaptation made for the same studio a few years prior but by all accounts, this is the more faithful of the two. Its lack of popularity at the time may have had something to do with the fact that John Garfield's star was seriously tarnished, having been accused of Communist sympathies as he was caught up in McCarthy's witch hunt. He only made one more movie, and died a year later.

  The film itself is quality: tightly plotted, well-paced and very nicely shot, in typical Noir style. Garfield is excellent as Harry Morgan, a…

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  Review by Ford H ★★★★ 2

  Bad circumstances. Bad choices.

  Money up front. ALWAYS.

  My dad made a comment while watching this. Reminded him of that one movie with Robert Pattinson as the dumbass brother.

  Me: "Good Time?"

  And yes, I guess you could say this is the Good Time of the 50s. Nothing just seems to go right.